Paradox Boy
by UE
Summary: Set years before Hizashi's death and sacrifice, a teenage Hiashi contemplates the unyielding complexities of Hyuuga tradition.


Do I contradict myself?   
Very well then I contradict myself,   
(I am large, I contain multitudes).  
--Walt Whitman

* * *

**Paradox Boy**

After the war, he had decided that true art was separate from what it is they were doing, and that the beauty many had attributed to their techniques was simply a fancy self-appointed justification, a bright florid banner fluttering in the wind that kept all eyes up and away from the dirty carpet of red that pooled and stained their feet. Indeed, to everyone else, the war had been worth it so long as they were victorious, the ends had absolutely eclipsed the means, and the mouths that had praised the Hakkeshou for its elegance and for its might had also cursed enemy techniques under which their fellow comrades had fallen. Techniques that had been just as powerful as the Gentle Fist, but would never be regarded as such. And something within him had hated that, because he couldn't see what the difference was between the deaths they were dealt and the deaths they had delivered. He had hated the hypocrisy.

That is not to say that he had denied—and he could never deny—that the techniques handed down through the Main House by themselves were not beautiful in their own right. He had marveled at how his hands would settle into arrowhead shapes, how some of his fingers would tuck against palm while others would strike out in deft, bullet-like succession. He had enjoyed the way the air would bend and pull beneath him when pummeling his arms forward and back, and he had relished in the thrill that came with launching into the 64 hands of Hakke, the glittering taste of chakra cresting his fingertips and skin. Even the footwork, he had known, resembled a folklore dance a cousin had shown him once, with its shy and sweeping steps, pointed toes, and properly pitched weight. All in all, it was skill and strength celebrating delicacy with ease, the most colorful manifestation of yin-yang principles in motion. True beauty, in his mind.

But it was only in the comfort of the central gardens at dawn, by the sightless eyes of auburn lit marigolds and daisies and beside the cool breath of morning breeze could names like Main and Branch be rendered obsolete and could performing such birthrights of the Hyuuga actually be considered beautiful. It had occurred to him that maybe in that sense, the Branch really was the superior line. Their deficient knowledge in the Byakugan's most guarded secrets had ended up being their greatest defense against assignments to the frontlines; they had served well as healers, as supporters on the side, as the underlying foundation that they were meant to always be. A part of him had even envied the Branch in having partaken in only the more pacific aspects of upholding their clan's pride. The rest of him had resented them.

Nevertheless, for a combative taijutsu to be executed without fulfilling what it was meant to do—and that was what the Byakugan's purpose had been, to _kill_—was useless. And he had realized this, had realized the utter futility and foolishness of seeing if there was a way to congregate the beauty in an art with the reality of battle without corrupting the integrity of each. But there had been no way. The countless youths he had pushed past the gates of the afterlife seemed to have sprouted human souls the instant before he would thieve their lives. Their skin coming off in lumpy, matted clumps; their sunken eyes lolling about until only the whites remained; their screams rattling in their throats like imprisoned birds. No, there had been nothing glamorous at all about the war.

And what he had hated most, what he had hated above all else, was the fact that as Hyuuga Hiashi, even as promised leader of the clan, the most he could muster were mere emotions of displeasure, of guilt. Nothing could truly be _done_ until he assumed place as Hyuuga's head, but even then, there was still the fact that blood spilt meant the blood of someone once living and that death during war could never came graciously. There would always be too many constants by which the world would abide, constants that had been in place for generations before his time and would last for an infinite amount after. Little cornerstone pieces of an already fated patchwork of existence.

So he had hated the hypocrisy, hated it until he was left with no choice but to accept it.

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End file.
